NY.- The flow of immigrants and refugees to the United States has increased over the past year, helping to replenish the American workforce after a decline that began with restrictions imposed by the Trump administration and accompanied by the pandemic.
The Biden administration has been speeding up the visa process and making extensive use of parole programs for migrants fleeing war and economic instability.
Those efforts have sparked a recovery in the foreign-born population — news that was welcomed by the Federal Reserve, which has been concerned that the persistent shortage of workers could drive up wages and that the inflation takes hold.
The employment report for the month of January, which was released on Friday, shows the creation of 517,000 jobs and confirms that the economy continues to demand more employees.
Modest wage growth suggests enough workers are arriving to keep costs in check.
Yet despite the resurgence of the foreign workforce, roughly four-fifths are people who have legal permission to work in the United States, and there are no bottlenecks.
Legal immigration remains below pre-Trump levels. Hundreds of thousands of people wait to meet with US consular officers to obtain immigration visas.
Millions of asylum claims are pending and obtaining work authorization for those already in the country could take years.
The uneasy state of immigration policy, which has been a contentious political issue for years, has been felt daily by Al Flores, the general counsel of a Houston Tex-Mex restaurant group and restaurant owner.
When restaurants cut back on employees during the pandemic, many of them left for places that were hiring — like the construction industry — and rehiring was challenging, given the sharp drop in immigration in 2020.
Currently, the company employs some 2,500 people, at least 12 percent of those who can work under the DACA program, which has been in jeopardy since Trump decided to end it.
Another 10 percent have temporary protected status, a designation given to people who have fled troubled countries and are usually allowed to stay in the United States for years.
Immigration policy will have a substantial impact on the supply of workers in the country, which has been expanding more slowly as native workers have had fewer children.
